Oregon RV Park Gets City’s OK

The city of Forest Grove, Ore., has given the green light to a new 21-space recreational vehicle park on the east side of town.
The City Council on Monday (Sept. 22) overturned the planning commission’s denial of a conditional use permit for the park after it became clear the city would be able to limit visitors’ length of stay, according to The Oregonian, Portland.
Planning commission members had been told that a new state law would prevent the city from limiting visits, leading commissioners to worry that the park would turn into an extension of the nearby Rose Grove Mobile Home Park, which is owned by the same person, Dorothy Royce.
But after researching the law further, staff concluded the city has authority to limit stays.
The city chose to impose a 31-day limit per calendar year. It also imposed conditions on landscaping, lighting, parking and street improvements.
Scott Mary, manager of the Best Western Motel just west of the proposed RV park, had testified at a planning commission hearing in July that there was increased gang and graffiti activity in the area.
Nearly 50 Rose Grove residents turned out for the City Council meeting Monday to refute the notion of misbehaving children and gang activity in their park.
Michael Robinson, Royce’s attorney, said visitors will enter the RV park via a road that now runs along the west side of the Best Western and into Rose Grove. That road will be closed to Rose Grove residents, who will use two other entrances off Oregon Highway 8.
Mary also thought that an RV park was an undesirable way to welcome people to Forest Grove.
Robinson promised attractive landscaping and said the park would look much better than a pawn shop, liquor store, car wash or other kinds of permissible uses – and better than what is there right now.
“If you approve this, you’ll have something better than a vacant lot with one tree in the middle of it.”